At the beginning of February 1996, EMI revealed that the delay in release of
the Anthology 2 album (put back from 26th February
to 18th March) was down to the Beatles' last minute change in
running order. This meant that I'm Down, which had been listed as
track 6, was moved to track 3. The change came after no fewer than two and a
half million CD booklets had already been printed and the cost of the reprinting
has been estimated at around 500,000 English pounds. Unconfirmed rumours suggest
it was Paul McCartney alone who insisted on the change and
Paul McCartney alone who shelled out for the cost of
reprinting the packaging.

Anthology 2 covers the Beatles
studio years from February 1965 to February 1968 (which most people regard as
their peak period as songwriters and musicians), adding a couple of live songs
en route. The music is unfinished, previously unreleased and in a state of flux.
Nevertheless, taken as a 45 song body of evidence, it is inferior to no music.
George Martin and his engineers created new versions of many
songs by piecing together portions from several different out-takes, newly
assembled collages which demonstrate the growth of a particular track.

After track one, the second new Beatles song, Real
Love we enter the band's secret world. With the exception of I'm Down
(bizarrely shifted out of sequence at the last minute at enormous expense)
George Martin has opted for a strict chronological approach.

It isn't so much that Anthology 2 has previously
unheard songs, it's the fact that we see so many songs in early takes. Among
Paul McCartney's favourites is the alternate version of the
Revolver song And Your Bird Can Sing,
featuring an appealing 12 string guitar part a la the Byrds,
but wrecked by a fit of Lennon and McCartney
giggling:

Paul: We couldn't have put it out then. It would have
been, 'How fucking indulgent of them, are they kidding?' But now
it just sounds like a hoot.

Then from November 1966 Lennon sings an electric guitar
demo and then the gentle, haunting first take of Strawberry Fields Forever
(which intriguingly doesn't have the lush harmony vocals heard on the bootleg
version of the track).

Similar birthings can be heard for many other songs, I'm Looking
Through You (a garage punk prototype), Tomorrow Never Knows
(embryonic drone), Good Morning Good Morning (an excellent rock trio
version), Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Paul's raucous
rendition), I Am The Walrus (sans overdubs yet still sounding
pioneering) and, arguably, most enthralling of all, A Day In The Life.

George Harrison: We've tried to create a lot of the most famous
songs but totally different versions of them.

Compiled from various outtakes exclusively for Anthology 2 ,
this edit of A Day In The Life is a sort of parallel universe
equivalent of the one we all know. Everything is unknown, new, fresh, fantastic
and unexpected. No final crashing piano chord, just McCartney
talking.

These Beatles demos contain not only massive historical
import but also massive musical value. They confirm that the Beatles'
heads were extraordinarily fertile orbs in the years 1965-68 and that history
could change in a week, or even in an hour.

The unaugmented, alternate take of the legendarily lovely Lennon
song, Across The Universe, ends the album on a thrillingly cosmic
note.

The majority of reviews for this second in the series of retrospective CDs
were positively ecstatic. Q magazine awarded Anthology 2
four start status (out of five), describing it as "magnificent".
The film magazine, Empire, seemed to agree and quipped, "Even in
rehearsal the Beatles shook the world" and Q Magazine noted "talent
of Macca glows like a nuclear accident".

First week sales in the UK were said to be 78,000 (against 125,000 for Anthology
1 and 148,000 for Live At The BBC) and
the album entered the chart at no 1.

In the USA Anthology 2 sold around 440,000
copies (about half that of its predecessor) in its first week, again entering
the chart at no 1.